I made it all the way to page 752 of this 928 page marathon and suddenly realized I didn't care a farthing about any of the characters or what happeneI made it all the way to page 752 of this 928 page marathon and suddenly realized I didn't care a farthing about any of the characters or what happened to them, and life was just too short to spend any more time on it. This was slightly surprising, since I'd quite enjoyed the first two Kingsbridge novels (see my review of World Without End)and I did give some life-minutes to thinking about why I found this one so uncompelling. It may be partly that I've reached the saturation point with fictional explorations of Henry VIII/Elizabeth I/Mary Queen of Scots (honestly, there were other Tudors who are pretty interesting, and the Planatagenets aren't bad source material either!) but the larger issue for me was a structural one. Where the first two novels took place mainly in Kingsbridge itself, following the intertwined stories of two or three main characters and centering the narrative around a major event in the life of the town (the construction of a cathedral, the building of a bridge), this third installment has a huge cast of principals scattered across England, Western Europe, and the West Indies, all pursuing their separate ends against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict between entrenched Catholicism and the newly-trending Protestant movement. The emphasis has shifted from strong protagonists and the life of the village, as a microcosm of larger historical event, to the sweep of history with an array of characters who seem to exist only to roam around providing eyes on Great Moments Of The 1500s. My guess is that this authorial choice is influenced by Follett's other ongoing series, the Century Trilogy, which I couldn't manage at all and for the same reason: to keep up with all the characters and their storylines he has to keep jumping from one to the other in a way that at least for me makes it impossible to get engaged with any of them enough to give a damn....more